Encyclopedia of Health and Medicine

52 Alternative and Complementary Approaches
The conventional framework that guides the
practice of medicine in the United States is physician
centered and based in measurable evidence
and reliably repeatable results through controlled
clinical studies. Though the true measure of a
treatment’s success is whether people improve or
worsen with its use, evidence-based standards give
conventional physicians a sense of reasonable
expectation when making treatment decisions and
recommendations. Many conventional doctors are
increasingly interested and willing to add responsible
alternative and complementary therapies to
integrative treatment plans when they have reasonable
expectations for how such therapies
may benefit the patient’s condition or QUALITY OF
LIFE.
When looking at the broad range of alternative
and complementary approaches from acupuncture
to PRAYER AND SPIRITUALITY to VISUALIZATION it is also
important to understand how patients look to
these methods in preventive and lifestyle contexts.
MEDITATION and YOGA, for example, have become
fairly mainstream as practices to reduce stress and
are gaining acceptance for their abilities to influence
health conditions such as HYPERTENSION (high
BLOOD PRESSURE). As researchers and doctors learn
more about the pathways and mechanisms of
MIND–BODY INTERACTIONS, they understand more
fully how lifestyle and preventive health measures,
with a holistic view of the individual, are
important. Within such a context, yoga and exercise
become comparable complements to good
health. Whether one or the other is “alternative”
or “conventional” has little relevance; each benefits
health in similar ways.
COMMON ALTERNATIVE AND
COMPLEMENTARY THERAPIES
ACUPUNCTURE
ART THERAPY
Chinese herbal remedies
FLOWER ESSENCES
MAGNET THERAPY
MEDICINAL HERBS AND BOTANICALS
OSTEOPATHIC MANIPULATIVE
TREATMENT (OMT)
VISUALIZATION
YOGA
AROMATHERAPY
BIOFEEDBACK
CRANIOSACRAL MASSAGE
HYPNOSIS
MASSAGE THERAPY
NUTRITIONAL THERAPY
PRAYER AND SPIRITUALITY
TAI CHI
VITAMIN AND MINERAL
THERAPY
Historical Traditions in
Alternative Healing Systems
The oldest known healing systems still in practice
today, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and
Ayurveda, date to perhaps 3000 B.C.E., well before
the advent of written language. NATIVE AMERICAN
HEALING originating among the indigenous cultures
of the North American continent melds spirituality
and health in much the same fashion as does
India’s Ayurveda and, archaeological evidence
suggests, could have origins that are nearly as
ancient. In these systems, healers passed their
knowledge from one to another, generation to
generation, through tradition and experience. In
some cultures each successive generation developed
improvements on the methods of healing
their ancestors used, and in other cultures each
generation of healers practiced in precise compliance
with the traditions they learned from the
generations before them.
Some alternative healing systems are relatively
modern, emerging within the past 100 or 200
years as outgrowths of what were the medical
practices of their times. Though common perception
views alternative and complementary therapies
as Eastern in their philosophies and practices,
these newer systems—notably HOMEOPATHY, NATUR-
OPATHY, and OSTEOPATHY—are Western in origin and
orientation. One alternative healing method, CHI-
ROPRACTIC, is uniquely American.
AYURVEDA
NATIVE AMERICAN HEALING
OSTEOPATHY
ALTERNATIVE HEALING SYSTEMS
HOMEOPATHY
NATUROPATHY
TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE (TCM)
Interest in, and use of, alternative therapies is a
growing phenomenon in the United States.
According to a 2002 survey by the US National
Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine
(NCCAM) and the US Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC) National Center for
Health Statistics (NCHS), nearly two thirds of
Americans use some form of alternative health
practice, most of them to complement their conventional
medical care.
Surveys show that half choose alternative therapies
on their own to complement conventional
therapies, a quarter use alternative therapies their